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6 Ways DMOs can Save Time with CrowdRiff

One of the most common challenges we hear from destination marketers is never having enough hours in the day. Whether it’s lean teams or tight deadlines, DMOs need to be able to work efficiently if they want to meet their goals. 

A task that can often be tedious and time consuming is sourcing impactful visual content. Stock images look ingenuine and don’t reflect newer activities and establishments in your area, and hiring photographers gets expensive fast. Sourcing quality user-generated content (UGC) produces the best outcomes, but who has the time to look through social media and request rights to the images? 

Thankfully, there is an answer. 

CrowdRiff takes the hard work out of finding the best UGC and enables you to:

  1. Stop endlessly scrolling through Instagram to find the best UGC

  2. Stop manually managing rights requests for UGC 

  3. Stop leaving your desk to photograph events or sites

  4. Stop pleading with tourism partners for imagery

  5. Stop fielding requests from the media

  6. Stop digging through server folders for the right visual assets

Let us show you how. 

Stop endlessly scrolling through Instagram to find the best UGC 

Whether you represent a large destination with a hashtag that is used by millions, or a small town whose hashtag isn’t well known, it can be very time consuming to scroll through Instagram for the perfect shot. 

Here’s where CrowdRiff comes in. 

It tracks relevant hashtags, tags, @ mentions, and business accounts, and collects the UGC into one library so you have only the most suitable content to choose from. Our sophisticated search and filter tools help you weed out the bad selfies and bring the most engaging visuals to the top. In minutes, you could fill your content calendar with a week’s worth of beautiful and authentic imagery – your scrolling thumb will thank you!

Stop manually managing rights requests for UGC

So, you’ve spotted the most amazing video on social media and you DM’d the user to ask their permission to reshare. But now what? How do you record their reply?

With data protection laws getting stricter, it’s crucial that you have clear rights before using UGC in your marketing. Without a proper tool to manage this, many DMOs rely on spreadsheets or other manual methods of keeping track (and can we all agree that spreadsheets are the worst?).

CrowdRiff gives you the tools to send user requests in your own voice and automatically record their responses. You can rest easy knowing you’ll never accidentally share an image or video without permission. 

For DMOs that typically ask users to sign a release form, we’ve got you covered, too! Check out this article on our Advanced Rights Management.

Stop leaving your desk to photograph events or sites

Let’s be honest, no destination marketer has time to leave the office for half a day to capture a local event. The walk might feel good, but it’s a time commitment that most marketing teams can’t afford. 

But how can you get imagery of all your fabulous festivals and sunniest weather at short notice?

CrowdRiff allows you to ingest UGC in real-time, turning your locals and visitors into your unofficial photography team. The moment you earn the user rights, you can share their visuals on your website or social channels to show the latest happenings in town.

For example, we love this blog post by Visit Zürich. Last spring they created a “blossom watch” page of the city’s cherry trees, complete with UGC galleries updated daily to show the blooms’ progress. 

It took only a few minutes to gather and share the most recent photos each day. And given the page’s high engagement, the Visit Zürich team plans to recreate it this year.

Stop pleading with tourism partners for imagery

Your destination has the coolest museums, the hippest restaurants, the greenest gardens… if only you had photos to prove it!

We often hear from DMOs that it’s almost impossible to get high-quality imagery from their local tourism partners. We get it – they’re busy too – but it can be frustrating to beg for photos to fill out your partner listings or blog posts.

Luckily, CrowdRiff makes it simple to source UGC that features the businesses you collaborate with, so next time you need a shot of the hottest new café, you only have to check your CrowdRiff library. 

You might also want to read about our Collector feature, which lets tourism businesses (and the public) send you visual assets at the click of a button.

Stop fielding requests from the media 

Journalists are key allies for telling your destination’s story. They need photos to illustrate their articles, but sometimes DMOs simply don’t have a relevant image to share.

Many content managers deal with media requests on a case-by-case basis. They search through photo archives for the perfect high-res picture and this takes time. What if you had an external library where travel writers could select visuals at their leisure? 

CrowdRiff’s Media Hub helps you put the best photos and videos of your destination out into the world, while still giving you full control over who can access them and what they can use.

Sanne Olsen, Manager of Digital Marketing and Communications at Wonderful Copenhagen, described how Media Hub has been essential for her team:

“It’s our backbone to host material we’ve been producing and share with third parties. But also, in general, to send files back and forth to each other internally.” Check out our case study on Wonderful Copenhagen here.
 

Stop digging through server folders for the right visual assets

We often talk to DMOs whose image and video files are stored on a server that is a nightmare to navigate. Their assets are sorted by date, or title, or photographer, or season, or theme, or … (you get the picture). 

If this sounds familiar, CrowdRiff has got your back. Our AI-powered search engine makes it a breeze to find your owned and earned visuals, thanks to:

  • Automatically added keywords

  • A “view similar” button to see more like the one you selected

  • Natural search phrases, like “hiking family” or “downtown restaurants”

Time to make a change

As you can see, there’s no reason to be wasting time on sourcing visual assets when CrowdRiff can do the heavy lifting for you. As DMOs worldwide deal with ever-changing travel restrictions due to Covid-19, this is the last thing you need to worry about!

See this year as a chance to start fresh with visual content workflows that work for you. Click here to see the platform in action and book an introductory call with our team.